The COVID-19 pandemic and its global effects on dental practice. An International survey

Abstract

Objectives A multicentre survey was designed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on dental practice worldwide, estimate the COVID-19 related symptoms/signs, work attitudes and behaviour and the routine use of protective measures and personal protective equipment (PPE). Methods A global survey using a standardized questionnaire with research groups from 36 countries was designed. The questionnaire was developed and pretested during April 2020 and contained three domains: 1) personal data; 2) COVID-19 positive rate and symptoms/signs presumably related to the coronavirus; 3) working conditions and PPE adopted after the outbreak. Countries’ data were grouped by the country positive rate (CPR) during the survey period and by Gross-National-Income per capita. An ordinal multinomial logistic regression model was carried out with COVID-19 self-reported rate referred by dental professionals as dependent variable to assess the association with questionnaire items. Results A total of 52,491 questionnaires were returned with a male/female ratio of 0.63. Out of the total respondents, 7,859 dental professionals (15%) reported symptoms/signs compatible with COVID-19. More than half of the sample (n=27,818; 53%) stated to use FFP2/N95 masks, while 21,558 (41.07%) used eye protection. In the bivariate analysis, CPR and N95/FFP2 were significantly associated (OR=1.80 95% CI=1.60/2.82 and OR=5.20 95% CI=1.44/18.80, respectively), while Gross-National-Income was not statistically associated with CPR (OR=1.09 95% CI=0.97/1.60). The same significant associations were observed in the multivariate analysis . Conclusions Oral health service provision has not been significantly affected by COVID-19, although access to routine dental care was reduced due to country-specific temporary lockdown periods. While the dental profession has been identified at high-risk, the reported rates of COVID-19 for dental professionals were not significantly different to those reported for the general population in each country. These findings may help to better plan oral health care for future pandemic events.

Dentist Related Factors Associated with Implementation of COVID-19 Protective Measures: A National Survey

“…In this study, the participation rate of 14.1% is in line with that of some surveys dealing with COVID-19 infection among dentists [13,15] but lower than other publications in recent literature [14,24,26]. The fact that the survey was launched during summer 2020 when the majority of the dentists had resumed their activities, thus being very busy with patient treatments and the fact that the survey was carried out in the holiday period, might have influenced the rate of participation.…”

“…Few national studies have investigated the level of infection among dentists, which, in its turn, is associated with dentists' knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and awareness of viral transmission in daily practice [12][13][14]. A recent study including data from 36 countries showed that the reported routine use of FFP2/N95 masks was the only measure significantly associated with a reduced risk of viral infection acquisition by dentists [15].…”

Pediatric Dentists’ Service Provisions in South-East Europe during the First Wave of COVID-19 Epidemic: Lessons Learned about Preventive Measures and Personal Protective Equipment Use

“…Data presented in this survey are part of the 2020 International Collaborative COVID-19 Disease Study, with a previously registered protocol at the World Pandemic Research Network (WPRN) WPRN-486352 [9]. The central management team of COVIDental Collaboration Group invited 36 collaborating research groups worldwide [10]. According to the protocol designed by the central coordinator (GC) and his team, our research team sent 13 invites to the collaborators from other countries geographically corresponding to the Southeastern Europe.…”

“…The structured and closed cross-sectional survey was developed using a previously standardized questionnaire available as supplement material in a previously published paper by the wider international team [10]. The questionnaire was designed by modified Delphi method and involved the following domains: (1) general data (personal, demographic, and working status); (2) data regarding COVID-19 infection rate and symptoms; and (3) use of preventive and prophylactic measures, PPE, and risk perception [9,10]. The study protocol was previously pretested on 12 dentists; only items showing Intra-class Correlation Coefficient higher than 0.80 were further tested and evaluated among 3599 dentists in North Italy in April 2020 [11].…”

“…The outcome (dependent) variables were (1) the presence of SARS-CoV-2 infection symptoms and (2) the frequency of COVID-19-positive tests among pediatric dentists. Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection symptoms was described as the occurrence of at least one or more self-reported, specific, or nonspecific COVID-19 symptoms, such as fever (>37.5 • C), cough, fatigue, difficulty breathing, nasal congestion, headache, running nose, sore throat, generalized pain, diarrhea, loss of smell, loss of taste, and conjunctivitis [10]. The frequency of COVID-19-positive tests among pediatric dentists was calculated using data when responders answered they tested positive during the first wave of the pandemic, or they were hospitalized due to COVID-19 infection.…”